Queerest of the Queer and BrewDog No Label

Queerest of the Queer aren’t the people you call when you want to pink wash – we don’t give you easy credits on your corporate social responsibility – we’re a collection of politically minded queers into performance and creating queer spaces.

So when BrewDog responded to our challenge to talk about their fundraising video and how they could seriously re-engage with and make amends to the LGBTQ+ community they weren’t taking the easy track.

We met and started to talk about levels of oppression and how Cis, White, Rich, Gay men are not the only voice, even if they are a loud voice. There are other lived experiences. We had long animated discussions, including how charitable money doesn’t often end up going to the grass roots organisations that help LGBTQ+ youth, especially when they are supporting the homeless and refugees.

Then we got talking about the history of brewing, the role of women in early brewing that was slowly erased, and the work Brew Dog are doing, and should continue to do, to bring more diversity into brewing.

This led us to talking about the closure of queer spaces, with the closure of the Black Cap, Madame JoJo’s and the George and Dragon to mention but a few.

So we ended up where we are today, with No Label – a beer with our name on it. A beer without anybody’s name on it. A beer, as it were, without a name.

All money from this venture is gong to charities – because one of the goals of Queerest of the Queer was that we give as much of any profit we can to charity. We didn’t make a profit from the festival in September- and this allowed us to do more than we could have done even if we had a capacity crowd.

Money is going to the Albert Kennedy Trust, Micro Rainbow who support LGBT asylum seekers, and we are working with Mosaic Youth and other youth charities to run a LGBTQ+ youth ball in the new year.

We haven’t put a label on what this relationship with BrewDog is – it would be counter-intuitive

All of this started with a conversation – because the most interesting things do.